Raising Secular Jews

Yiddish Schools and Their Periodicals for American Children, 1917–1950

Naomi Prawer Kadar

Publication Year: 2016

This unique literary study of Yiddish children’s periodicals casts new light on secular Yiddish schools in America in the first half of the twentieth century. Rejecting the traditional religious education of the Talmud Torahs and congregational schools, these Yiddish schools chose Yiddish itself as the primary conduit of Jewish identity and culture. Four Yiddish school networks emerged, which despite their political and ideological differences were all committed to propagating the Yiddish language, supporting social justice, and preparing their students for participation in both Jewish and American culture.

Focusing on the Yiddish children’s periodicals produced by the Labor Zionist Farband, the secular Sholem Aleichem schools, the socialist Workmen’s Circle, and the Ordn schools of the Communist-aligned International Workers Order, Naomi Kadar shows how secular immigrant Jews sought to pass on their identity and values as they prepared their youth to become full-fledged Americans.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright, Dedication

Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword

Children are discerning consumers. They know that what is free is not the same
as what must be paid for out of one’s own allowance. I had the good fortune to
attend a secular Jewish day school in Montreal, where from sixth grade on we
received three monthly magazines for children free of charge:
Kinder zhurnal
(Children’s journal) in Yiddish,
World Over
in English...

Preface

In the first half of the twentieth century, Eastern European Jewish immigrants
created and published children’s literature in Yiddish for their sons and daughters
growing up in America. Yiddish fiction for children first appeared in the Yiddish
children’s periodicals of the four major Yiddish school networks that emerged in
this period—the Labor Zionist Farband, the secular...

Acknowledgments

It is impossible to research and write a dissertation without a broad network
of support, assistance, and encouragement. It is a special pleasure to have the
opportunity to express my heartfelt thanks to those who offered their academic
expertise, their penetrating insights, their time, and their generosity of spirit
throughout this project....

1 | The Rise of Secular Yiddish Schools

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, waves of Yiddish-speaking Eastern
European immigrants to America were catapulted into the reality of being a
cultural minority in a free and pluralistic society. Their desire to preserve and
propagate the culture they brought with them, for themselves and their children, was coupled with the need to learn...

2 | Children’s Magazines: From Cover to Cover

The emergence of each of the major secular Yiddish school networks in the United
States (Farband, Sholem Aleichem, Workmen’s Circle, and the Ordn schools)
was accompanied by the publication of its own children’s magazine. This chapter
provides an introduction to these magazines and their respective philosophies
as expressed by their...

3 | Farband’s Kindervelt: Living in Two Cultures

In 1917 Yoyel Entin created the children’s journal
Di yidishe kindervelt
(The Jewish
children’s world) as a component of the new secular Jewish school movement
called
di naye yidishe dertsiung
(the new Jewish education). Nowhere before had
there been a school system or a magazine that took on the task of providing a
clear link between the American children of immigrants...

4 | The Sholem Aleichem Schools’ Kinder zhurnal: Yiddish for the American Child

An overview of the
Kinder zhurnal
from its inaugural issue until the years after
World War II demonstrates that it is very much a mirror of the diverse periods in
the evolution and acculturation of the secular Yiddish-speaking Jewish community in America. Its sensitivity to historical vicissitudes and its implicit reactions
to events, both in the Jewish world and in the world...

5 | The Workmen’s Circle’s Kinder tsaytung: A More Beautiful and Better World

“A shenere un a besere velt” (A more beautiful and a better world), the motto
of the Workmen’s Circle, aptly describes its purpose. Known in Yiddish as the
Arbeter Ring, it was founded in 1900 as a Jewish labor fraternal organization to
ameliorate the lives of Jewish workers. Initially offering health and death benefits, as well as cemetery plots, the Workmen’s Circle created...

6 | The Ordn Schools’ Yungvarg: A Progressive Jewish Education

“The split in the Socialist ranks was very powerful, and harmful, and it was about
attitudes to the Soviet Union,” reflects Itche Goldberg, commenting on the conflict between the Workmen’s Circle’s central leadership and its left-wing faction
that led to the ouster of its Communist members and eventually the birth of the
IWO
and the Ordn schools. Looking back at his...

7 | Writing the Holocaust for Children

In 1941, Yudl Mark began to publish
Der pedagogisher buletin
(The pedagogic
bulletin), a forum for the teachers in the Yiddish secular schools. Mark’s February 1943 editorial lends insight into the way in which the teachers were guided
to approach the daunting subject of the Holocaust. Mark believed that the children should not be sheltered from the brutality...

8 | The Child Hero and the Uses of Fantasy

Jewish storytelling in many genres (including moralizing tales, fairy tales, magic
tales, trickster tales, and legends) was a pervasive feature of everyday life of
Eastern European Jews for many generations.1
However, the first modern story
written for children in Yiddish is generally considered to be “Dos meserl” (The
penknife), by Sholem Aleichem—a story he originally...

9 | Folklore and Jewish Folk Heroes

The Yiddish secular schools arose not only in reaction to the specter of acculturation and assimilation that life in America brought, but also as an opportunity for
educators to transmit a valued folk heritage to the younger generation. Purposely
distanced from specifically religious sources, the ideologues of the Yiddish secular schools in America recognized the creative...

10 | Almost at Home in America

As the war raged in Europe, decimating the Jewish population in the heartland of
Yiddish culture, American Jews were feeling a new sense of belonging in America,
expressed through support and identification with the war effort as Americans
and Jews. From the late 1930s to the end of World War II, more acculturated
images of Jewish life in America appear...

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the simple Search box at the top of the page or the Advanced Search linked from the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the Advanced Search page or on your search results page. Click the Browse box to see a selection of books and journals by: Research Area, Titles A-Z, Publisher, Books only, or Journals only.